Open Courts Are Necessary For Everybody

Let me share with you the verbatim text of Count VIII from the indictment against four men charged with using baseball bats to kill a house full of people in Deltona.

This is the count that briefly lays out in graphic terms what was done to the body of a young woman after she was killed.

Wait. I can't write that.

Our newspaper's decency and good taste guidelines prohibit publishing such a horrific description.

The words are sickening, as are the photos and video taken at the crime scene. These images would never appear in a reputable newspaper. Even local television news would not stoop so low.

But State Attorney John Tanner has filed a motion asking a judge to seal the photos and video taken at the crime scene.

Tanner's immediate fear is not unusual among prosecutors: He thinks the pretrial release of the photos could prejudice a jury.

What should alarm you is his longer-term goal to seal the images permanently.

Tanner said he worries that the images will find their way onto the Internet and into the tabloids, causing the victims' families more anguish.

It is nice that he worries about the families' feelings, but this is starting to sound like the John Tanner who once acted more like a state nanny than a state attorney.

Many of you are new to the area and may not remember when Tanner -- in his zeal to clean up Volusia County -- asked video store owners to cough up the names of people who had rented certain dirty movies.

It was part of a grandstanding campaign to rid Volusia County of obscenity, and one of the reasons voters kicked Tanner out of office in 1992 after only one term.

Naturally, Tanner blamed the media, an observation that might have had more validity if his loss hadn't been in the Republican primary.

Tanner returned to private practice but was swept back into office in 1996, transforming his public persona from Mr. Hyde into Dr. Jekyll.

But the new Tanner, who before took an interest in who was watching X-rated movies, now cares about privacy so much that he risks eroding the public's rights to access records.

This has been attempted before.

The photos of five students murdered and horribly mutilated at the University of Florida in 1990 were so shocking that jurors needed counseling, and the state attorney in that case fought to have the photos sealed from public view.

A judge finally ruled the photos could be viewed but not copied.

That makes sense, but apparently not to Tanner. He thinks today's technology will allow someone to sneak in a miniature camera, surreptitiously copy the photos and post them on the Internet or in some sleazy publication.

This is hardly an endorsement of courthouse security procedures. Besides, Tanner seems to overestimate the hunger for these photos; he is not prosecuting O.J. Simpson here.

But more important, his proposal would send another piece of the judicial process into some black hole where the public is not allowed to go.

Could the terrible words found in Count VIII one day become a state secret as well?